Monday, February 27, 2012

Macau Baby, Macau

Macau is the Vegas of China.  Like Hong Kong, it is an SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China, which means it gets to play by different rules than the mainland.  On Saturday, Foley and I took a day trip to this wonderful island, just a one-hour boat ride away.

Macau was a Portuguese colony until 1999.  It's a true fusion of European style and Asian culture.

The mosaic side walks and classic European buildings had me reminiscing past travels in Europe.  Fole's response "wouldn't know".  He's holding strong to his intention of going everywhere else in the world before Europe. We all have goals in life.


We walked around town for a while, ending up at a famous landmark called the Ruins of St. Paul's.  Where was once the largest Catholic church in Asia, now stands only the original stone facade, accredited as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  There are catacombs in behind the facade, but we had dinner reservations... I'm sure they'll keep until our next visit.



Macanese Chicken
Dinner was delicious. On a strong recommendation from a new friend, we went to a somewhat sketchy part of the city to a traditional Portuguese/Macanese restaurant called 'A Lorcha'.  I got a traditional Macanese chicken dish (chicken in coconut and turmeric sauce), Foley got a "very good" steak.  [As I'm writing this I asked him, "Was there anything special about your dinner?" Response: "Nope, just very good".  Man of few words.]



After dinner we took a long walk back to the other side of the island where the casinos are.  The first one we walked into neither Foley nor I recognized the game they were playing.  We thought it may be an 'Asian-style' game so we pressed on to a more recognizable casino, the Wynn.  As we walked into the Wynn Foley laughed.  He had looked up that mysterious game, which is called 'Baccarat'.  Apparently it is the one of the most popular casino games world-wide.  Good lord, we're such amateurs.  I went in search of a funny slot machine (because, yes, I play for the characters), while Foley watched poker.  My $100HK (about $12.50 Cdn) didn't last long (shocker).  We moved over to the Roulette table where we put the minimum bets on our favourite numbers.  Within 15 minutes we went from $150HK to $770HK... Done.  That beauty table paid for over half of our weekend trip.


After an impressive fountain show (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEpUfR2fj0I&feature=youtu.be), we walked back to the ferry docks and caught the 11:15pm ferry back to HK island.  Foley napped for the hour journey and I did some Cantonese homework.  That was our big night out.  Cripes, we are old for our age.

Sunday was a whole new adventure.  After a BodyPump class (yep, my gym has BodyPump, with English instruction! Amazing.), I came back home in the early afternoon to wake Fole up.  The day before, while walking for hours around Macau, we had decided to finally go for a foot massage (reflexology massage, actually) on Sunday.  This is a very common past-time here, and one that we're both interested to participate in.  There was one place that looked decent, which we decided to try out. [looked decent = ground level, major street, saw many people of various ethnicities going in and out, essentially got a comfortable feeling that it was not a dodgy business doing dodgy-surprise things].

We went into the window-less room, filled with more than 30 comfy chairs and ottomans, and people getting foot massages everywhere.  A strange community feel to the experience.  An upgrade option for only $50HK extra ($6.25 Cdn) was a shoulder and back massage, so obviously that was happening.  We had two men rubbing our backs and feet who had about 3 words of English between them.  Overall the experience was great, save for the bruises on my lower back (not exaggerating, have photos).  If you haven't tried reflexology before, the essence is that there are 'reflexes' in your feet for every part of the body.  By pushing on a certain part of the foot, they can tell what parts of your body are holding tension or injured, and supposedly release some of said tension or inflammation.  My biggest sources of pain were connected to my knees, lower back, and stomach/intestines (all typical problems for me).  Foley's biggest reaction was for the sciatic nerve (lower back).  Also a very impressive find. Considering these men knew nothing about us, they figured out our 'weak points' pretty quickly.

Have you ever had a massage where they make loud slapping sounds by hitting you with a slightly cupped hand?  These guys did that.  I was a little taken aback when that slapping found it's way down to my tailbone... I was being spanked!  I wasn't sure how to react to this, when out of the corner of my eye I watched Foley get spanked by his guy.  I took a mental picture, which I shall cherish forever.



Sunday, February 19, 2012

Yum! Yuck.

Food.  It is inevitably one of the first questions people ask.  What do you eat there?  Can you find food that you like?...

Hong Kong is referred to as Asia's World City, because the entire world is present here.  This is true of people, as well as cuisine.  For example, Friday after class, myself and three classmates (friends!) went out for Indian food.  It was excellent.  Last weekend, Foley and I had a wonderful Thai meal just minutes from our new home. Essentially, anything you could want is here, and certainly some things you would not want as well.

To simplify this post, I have separated food into two categories: Yum! and Yuck.  I apologize in advance if I knock some of your favourite dishes, but this is just a quick summary of my tastes and experiences with food so far.

YUM!
Foods that are thoroughly enjoyed.

1) Dim Sum = YUM YUM!
Foley and I have gone out for Dim Sum several times already. Dim Sum (for those of you who don't know, because I didn't really until I came here) is simply chinese style dumplings.  They are stuffed with various meats or seafood (no seafood for me though... we'll get to that in the Yuck category).

This is my favourite type of dim sum, the Shanghai-style dumplings, which have some meat and soup inside... mmm.

2) Tohng Seui ("Sugar Water" - traditional Chinese dessert)
Wolfi and Tom - farewell dinner/dessert
Sign that I can't read...
Traditional Chinese Dessert

We went out on Friday with two new friends from Germany (Tom and Wolfi), to say farewell as they move on in their 3-month vacation.  We went out for a fairly traditional chinese dinner (delicious), then they took us to a place that neither Foley nor I would have ever walked into if they hadn't been with us.  I would tell you the name, but I can't... I can only show you the sign.  We were the only foreigners in the restaurant.  Very authentic Chinese.  Here the guys introduced us to this traditional chinese dessert of doughy-balls filled with sesame seeds, floating in a sugar water soup.  Sounds gross, but it was quite delicious.

3) Grocery store selection & home-cooking
I (as the housewife) can cook just about anything I could make at home (with approximately the same skill level, no improvements noted in that category yet).  Save for some puzzling absences (like BBQ sauce), we have been able to eat fairly similar to back home, using our tiny kitchen and local grocery stores.  Foley's absolute favourite is Sweet & Sour Chicken stir-fry.  He has made it quite clear that I can make this dish exclusively for the next two years and he will be content.  I, however, enjoy a wee bit of variety.

I find the rice selection hilarious.  The soya sauce has a similar sized section (yes, section) with 50+ varieties of soya sauce.  Vegetables and fruit selection is actually more similar to home than I expected (I don't know why, I have heard of this whole 'globalization thing').  It is notable that the carrots here are HUGE, even bigger than the corn (see photo).


YUCK.
Some of the less appealing foods.

1)  Dead Fish EVERYWHERE

Wondering through the fish market.
I still can't stand the smell or idea of eating seafood or fish... It's a childhood aversion that I have never gotten over.  This is quite tragic because this is supposed to be one of the best places in the world for fish and seafood.  I'm embarrassed to admit that I still hold my breath when I walk by shops with dried seafood 'snacks' on display.  It's just not that pleasant for me to sniff dried squid bits.  I do plan on expanding my tastes while living here, but I'm clearly not ready for that quite yet.

The way that fish are displayed and sold here is very different from home.  In my attempt to master tech-savy status, I have started a youtube channel (yeah me!).  Click on the following link to walk through a fish market with me for 54 seconds.  In the first 2 seconds, an escapee shrimp jumps the net and lands on my foot. [link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL4jPyZWJFs]

Please use your imagination for how these displays smell.  Can't wait for 35 degree summer days...

2) Preserved Duck
It's like beef jerky, but with ENTIRE duck carcasses!  What the?  Oh wait, but if you only really want the neck, head and the duck bill, that's an option too, of course.








3) Chicken Feet

Seems to be quite common, they're everywhere.  Chicken feet with toe nails still on 'em.  Apparently they are used in soup for flavouring, or they are eaten dehydrated as a crispy snack while watching TV (*gag*).  Although I give props for not wasting a single bitty-bit of the bird, I'll leave that delightful dish up to the locals.


I clearly still have some way to go in terms of being adventurous with food.  We've been playing it pretty safe so far.  I will be certain to post about food again the moment I try something crazy like snake or (gasp) FISH.









Thursday, February 16, 2012

Random Musings from The Middle Kingdom (by the other half)


This blog is supposed to be primarily Trish’s recap of our adventures in the Far East, but given our one month anniversary of arriving just came and went, I thought I’d weigh in with a guest entry.  Which will be severely lacking in photos, because I don’t really know how to do that.  So, it is probably better suited for an email than I blog, but I’ve never blogged before, and it is the year 2012, so I’m feeling deprived.  But I digress…

According to my friends at WikipediaCanada is the 230th most densely populated country in the whole world (out of 241, and that includes Western Sahara, whose status as a real place is in dispute).  So, after 31 years and 15 days of living with more space and trees and fresh air than I knew what to do with, we decided to pack up and move to country number three on the densely populated list.  And it falls behind only Macau (which is next door), and Monaco (which is kind of a made up place too).  Singapore is number four on the list, but at least Singapore is clean.  Like, really clean. 

So, here we are in this little country, absolutely jammed packed full of people.  And malls.  My God, the malls.  They are everywhere.  And naturally, when trying to jam that many people and malls into a tiny space, with a bloody mountain in the middle of it all, the only place to go is up.  Those that are afraid of heights need not apply.  The amount of skyscrapers is actually mind boggling. 

Of course, there is nothing I hate more than a good crowd, so safe to say, it has taken a bit of time to make the adjustment.  What I do like, however, is gadgets, and there are plenty of those around too.  We live in a 500 square foot apartment, and have four remote controls for our air conditioners alone.  We have three remotes for our tv (four, including the Apple TV).  I have a remote control for my online banking.    There is a remote control for our space heater.  Throw in a couple of iPods, laptops, blackberrys, iPads and an iPhone, and you’d swear you found Duracell’s happy place.  You want to know why China is taking over the world?  They embrace technology.  And I dig that.  Had I moved here two years ago, I could have told you to short RIM stock aggressively, because everyone here has an iPhone.  Everyone.  I’m almost embarrassed to peck away at my little blackberry in public.

Another thing there are lots of is taxis.  Loads of them.  Google tells me there are 18,138 licensed taxis in Hong Kong, versus 12,779 in New York City.  And given their abundance, it makes them a bargain.  The minimum fare in a cab is HK$20, which is $2.50 Canadian.  But, the meter won’t move for about 10 minutes of driving, so it is super cheap to get anywhere.  And the cabs need to be cheap in order to compete with the public transportation, which by all accounts, is awesome.  The subway system is ALWAYS on time, is essentially 100% automated, and charges based on distance travelled (are you reading this, Mr. TTC Chairman?).  To travel from one end of the island, all the way to the other, is HK$7.50.  Less than a buck.  Amazing.  Of course, you have to do it with 19 people pressed up against you into your armpits, but you can’t have it all.  At least my height affords me a clear sightline of the length of the train.  Just a few other random white guys poking up out of the crowd here and there.  And, all the signs and exits are very well marked in both English and Cantonese, making getting around this chaotic city quite a bit easier than it otherwise could have been. 

The business district, and my office, is in ‘Central’, which is not unlike the downtown core of Toronto (but with more British people), including lots of interconnected buildings, and an oversupply of Starbucks.  In fact, if anyone can convince the CEO of Tim Horton’s to open a store here, I’ll run it for him.  I think the coffee here is terrible, and with 300,000 Canadians living in HK, I’m pretty sure it’s a slam-dunk opportunity.  Also, did anyone know the stock market here actually closes for 90 minutes at noon??  They have changed the rules, so that it will ONLY close for an hour starting next month, which was of course met with a protest and walk out by the exchange workers.  But, our middle office people don’t seem to mind, as 30 of them totally vanish at about 12:01, and aren’t seen again until early afternoon.  I seriously don’t know where they go, but it’s kind of creepy walking around the other part of the office in the middle of the day with no one there.  If Scott Adams were here, he’d have a field day.  Aside from that, I just passed my licensing exam last night (barely… it was brutally tough.  I suddenly understand why there is a 58% pass rate…), so real work and mining for clients will only really start up next week.  Given my unadventurous nature, I have managed to find a Longos equivalent just a few minutes away for lunch, and since I ate there three or four days a week back home, at least that aspect of this experiment has been a pretty soft landing.  I did have one lunch with a co-worker at a hard-core Chinese food place (they just call it food), where it was essentially a banquet hall filled with 499 Chinese people… and me.  There were a total of zero English words on the menu.  So, that was interesting.  I did survive, but now have a very healthy fear of my first client lunch that I’m at without backup.  That will be a whole blog entry by itself.

Our new apartment is great, and nicely furnished with only the finest Ikea had to offer, while we wait for the rest of our stuff to arrive, which is currently somewhere in the middle of the Pacific.  Trish has already run through the escalator situation, which makes getting to and from work easy, and is quite civilized and orderly given the amount of people using it.  Visitors have been more plentiful that I expected, with Danielle and Keith here as we arrived, a few beers with Sash (from high school) and brunch with Dave Thomas (from work) last weekend, and Lauren and Lauree en route for the beginning and end of March, respectively.  So, good times all around. 

Thanks again for all the emails and updates over the past four weeks, especially as Linsanity descended upon Toronto the past few days.  It hasn’t become a frenzy here yet, but I suspect the clock is ticking (he’s from Taiwan, which is part of the Republic of China, but not the People’s Republic of China.  I know.  It’s confusing.  I don’t understand either).  Anyway, it seems to me that when the Chinese find something they like, they grab hold and promote the hell out of it.  So, he’ll be all over the buses and subways and buildings soon enough.  What a great story.  

Off the top of my head, that’s all I got for now.  The punchline is that we are doing great, and becoming more settled/acclimatized by the day.  Stay tuned for your regular programming from Trish, which will include a lot more cool pictures of everything we are experiencing.  Hope things are great with one and all. 

  Mike

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Excuses, excuses...


I planned to post a minimum of once per week.  I'm below my quota, I apologize.  Excuses, excuses, excuses (3 to be exact)...

1) Cantonese Language Classes

I'm still working my way through some intensive language lessons.  The true reason I haven't posted more is because I STRUGGLE with the language and crazy-fast speed of instruction.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that I spend only two hours in class each day, but a minimum of 3-4 hours doing homework each day/night.  It's tough.

By the third lesson, my classmate from Spain got a job (what's that??) so he had to switch to the evening classes.  Net result: I am by now unquestionably the worst student in my class.  The teacher actually has to stop regularly because my face is all twisted up in confusion. "Foley sui-je, mihng-mh-mihng baahk?" [Literal translation: Ms. Foley, do you understand?]

Tom, Wolfie, Me
I also just realized that I am one of only two native English speakers in the class.  That means that I should have some advantage, as the instruction is in English.  Nope.  The German guys (Tom and Wolfie), for example, rock the class despite having to learn Cantonese via English instruction and then translating in their minds into German.  I'm thoroughly impressed by this.

Mimi, Chi
It has been two weeks since our lessons began and I somehow managed to pass my 'exam' today!  It was quite shocking when I realized that I could now have a very simple conversation in [broken] Cantonese.  My classmates and I went out to celebrate.  I have really enjoyed taking class with them and I'm happy that the American (Mimi) and Vietnamese girl (Chi) are also continuing on to beginner level two, which we are starting tomorrow.  


2) Making Friends

In the past, I have always met my friends 'organically', meaning, it just happens (school, work, university, etc).  I have never really had to 'try' to make new friends, save for one embarrassing story that my mom reminded me of a few weeks ago.

At age 8, my family moved from New Liskeard (in Northern Ontario) to Kitchener-Waterloo.  I had to leave best friend, Shauna, who was my next door neighbour and also as much a part of me as any limb I had.  As devastated as I was to leave her, I clearly assumed that all houses had next door neighbours like Shauna.  So, on our first day in Waterloo, my mom woke up at 7am (it was a Saturday) and I was sitting cross-legged at the end of our drive way.  When walked down the driveway to ask me what I was doing, I replied "I'm waiting for my new fwend".  

Mom wrote me three weeks ago to ask if I was waiting outside my apartment building for a fwend yet.  She's a riot.

It was only last weekend, when we were out for an amazing night with one of Foley's old high-school buddies, Rich (Pardy) and his girlfriend Aline, that this theme came up again.  It was a good joke at the pub table when I openly admitted to having no friends.  There were several people around the table, all ex-pats and one 'visitor', who had a good chuckle at this, since they've all 'been there'.  I pulled out my cell phone and showed my list of contacts (I had owned the phone for about 2 weeks at this point).

Cough... crickets... yep, just my husband. My only fwend.

I'm happy to report that since this night I have acquired a few new 'contacts' I'd like to call my friends. 

 Two of the many escalators (to left in photo)

3) Moving House

We have now moved from our temporary apartment, into our 'permanent' apartment in the 'mid-levels'.  Our new area is referred to as the mid-levels because it is mid-way up the mountain.  Foley has several options to get to work, one of which is to take the escalator.  The escalator is exactly as it sounds.  Streets are so steep up the mountain side that at some point the government installed a public escalator.  It only goes one way.  Down the mountain in the morning, until 10am, then up from 11am to late.  Foley counted the other day, about 17 escalators in total, some are fairly short, while others stretch 2-3 stories high.  Amazing... unless you are going against the flow, in which case you are taking all those steps.  Getting to my gym is about 1/2 down the hill.  That means, give or take, 10 stories worth of stairs getting down there.  Arthritis beware.


Crush, crush, crush.
The apartment is great.  Aside from the fact that our furniture is still to arrive.  I have spent many afternoons here, before there was anything here, waiting for the internet and TV guy, the gas guy, the Ikea delivery guys, etc.  To amuse myself, I started crushing cars below.  
(If you are unaware of this amusing activity, educate yourself via youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkQ8cpPsoWU&feature=related)

Despite head crushing breaks, moving has kept us very busy.  We only officially started living here on Sunday night.  With minimal furniture (only what we've bought here) we are currently 'camping' on a futon in the living room which is why there aren't any updated photos yet.  We had a flood yesterday (on Valentines Day, no less), which I came home to with arms full of groceries, after a long day.  I had put a load of laundry in before I left, and although everything appeared fine, I got home to find water from the kitchen (where the laundry machine is, naturally) out into the dining room/living room, and all the way to our hallway.  Sheesh.  We had a plumber out who didn't speak a word of English while we had our Valentines dinner of Special K with berries.  Very romantic.  The plumber called his office, would explain stuff to a person over the phone, then handed us the phone to hear the translation.  Hilarious, but it worked.  We are now just trying to dry everything out... it's so humid here that clothes take 3-4 days to dry IF you have a sunny window to hang stuff in.  It's hazy and rainy and humid right now, so who knows how long it will take?

Excuses aside, and with a promise to try harder, more updates to come soon...

View from our bedroom window at night.






Sunday, February 5, 2012

我是学生! [I'm a student!]

Thursday was my first day at my new Cantonese language classes.  Classes are from 11 to 1 every day.  I already shared a picture of my course materials, which are terrifying, but I kept myself calm thinking 'how much can they really cover in two short hours?'  The answer is two long hours.

Let me back up first...

When you move, it's often the simple things that you forget to pack.  I forgot to bring a backpack.  I know it sounds geeky (and NOT very HK, where style is paramount) but when you're heading out for a full day, kicking around the city, doing a hike or going to class, a backpack is pretty essential.  So on Wednesday, I went to 'Times Square', a seven story shopping mall down the street to buy a backpack among some other things for our new home.  [Did you know that housewife duties include doing all the shopping? Ah-mazing.]  Back the the 7-storey shopping mall...

Inside this mall were many surprising and beautiful stores... most of which are far too fashionable and made for people much smaller than me.  The 5th floor was dedicated entirely to sporting goods stores and athletic, casual wear stores.  I found a backpack at the Patagonia store.  Check.

Hong Kong is truly a vertical city.  I had heard this before, but I hadn't really understood it.  Essentially, if you want to own a 'storefront' in Toronto, you are looking for ground floor, hopefully on a major street to gain as much foot traffic as possible.  Here, any floor goes.  You see signs at street level for Dim Sum on the 8th floor, Starbucks on the 3rd floor, heck Foley and I were in an electronics 'mall' on the 10th and 11th floors of a shopping centre last night.  You see, Hong Kong Island (for obvious reasons) has limited land space.  Imagine Manhattan, now imagine Manhattan with mountains in the middle of the island... that's Hong Kong.

Back to my first day of class...

So I donned my new (unstylish but functional) backpack, and walked to class.  My class has six students, including me.  One American girl of Korean decent, two German guys on vacation for 3 weeks (they're flight attendants), one Vietnamese girl who also spent a few years living in France, and one Spanish guy who is a Thai boxing instructor.  It's like the whole world in one tiny classroom.

Aside from the Spanish guy who struggles with English still, and is learning Cantonese via English instruction, I am the WORST student in the class.  Holy crap, it's tough.  On day one, we learned the first six tones to Cantonese (more tones to follow), we learned pleasantries (hi, how are you, would you please come in, please sit down, would you like tea, where are you from, sorry, please, thank you, excuse me, etc. and responses to all these), how to refer to people (terms for Mr/man/husband/sir, wife/Mrs., Miss/women, etc.), numbers 1 through 100, and the major countries of the world and their people.   That was all in the first hour.  The second hour is with our 'tutor' who runs conversational practice with us, using all the terms we JUST learned.  I'm BRUTAL.

Tones. In case you don't know, Cantonese is a tonal language.  That means that the tone in which you say a word matters as much or more than your pronunciation of the actual sound.  For example, the word si (pronounced 'see'), means six different things depending on the tone assigned to it.  There are the high tones (high increasing, high decreasing, high flat) and the low tones (low increasing, low decreasing, low flat).  SO, combine these tones with the new words that we were learning and it's A LOT to take in.  I did about 6 hours of homework that afternoon/evening, and I was still overwhelmed.

Icing on the slice of life that day?  We were waiting after class for an elevator.  After about half a dozen PACKED elevators arrived with no room to physically squish another person inside, eight of us decided we would just take the stairs.  We were only on the 6th floor (technically 7th, since it goes ground, then 1st floor, etc. here).  We took the stairs the whole way down only to find out there was no way out.  Even the fire escape was locked (safety first?).  We walked back up, checking every locked door on every floor back up to the 6th.  Eventually someone discovered us in there, and we were able to get out... It was only about 15 minutes in total, but I spent 15 minutes locked in a stairwell after my first class... humbling.

Mike's words of reassurance when I told him how challenging the course is... "Well, you can always take it again and again if you need to".  Sweet.  So he's preparing for me to fail beginner, level one at least twice.